by Dave Daren
After a few minutes, my phone buzzed in my pocket, and I shifted from my new perch on the dusty stone step to pull it free. I wasn’t sure what I had hoped to see, maybe a message from Clara, or an email informing me that the entire sheriff’s department had fallen prey to an incredibly isolated earthquake and had been swallowed up into the earth, but instead, I had a text from David.
Interview with the local news went well, thanks for the info :)
A faint smile pulled at my lips as I read his message. I found it oddly charming that David still texted with old-school emoticons and there was just something strangely wholesome about it. It was a behavior I wouldn’t have guessed he had just by looking at him.
I shifted on the steps and sent back a quick message of my own.
Glad it helped! I’m sure I’ll hear the announcement soon.
I was a little bit sad that I’d had to miss the announcement if I was being honest with myself, but given everything else I’d had to do that morning, I’d had to forgo waiting around to watch David speak with the petite, dark-haired reporter from Channel 5 about his election bid.
Before I could pull up any of the local gossip pages on Facebook to see if the news had spread to them yet, I saw a compact, black car pull into the parking lot alongside Evelyn’s vehicle from the corner of my eye.
I quickly pushed myself up to my feet and replaced my phone back into my pocket before I dusted off my trousers and straightened my spine.
The door to the black car swung open and a man I recognized as Judge Calhoun stepped out. I nearly laughed aloud as I saw that he hadn’t dressed up like I had, and instead was in what looked almost like pajamas.
He had on a pair of dark-gray pajama pants that criss-crossed with a black plaid pattern and a navy t-shirt. I could have sworn he also wore a pair of orthopedic slippers.
It was a strange image to reconcile with the one I usually had of Calhoun.
He was perhaps my favorite judge to work with in Crowley, and maybe even all of Tarrant County. He was stern, but never cruel, and despite his opinion that I was too reckless, he never treated me like an idiot, and I appreciated that level of restraint.
Calhoun, in fact, had been the judge to usher along the Knox petrochemical plant class action suit that had really kicked off my tenuous relationship with the Crowley sheriff’s department.
I just hoped he’d be as critical of the local police as he had been with Knox Chemicals.
“Good morning!” I called out to Calhoun as he made his way across the parking lot with a dour look on his face.
I raised up my hand in greeting and plastered a smile across my face that I hoped was convincing without making me look as manic and strung out as I felt.
Calhoun gave a grunt that I just barely managed to hear as he approached the courthouse steps. His thinning hair looked as if he’d barely run a comb through it that morning, and I was that much more grateful he’d been willing to see me on a Sunday morning at all.
At least I hadn’t interrupted his church time, I reasoned.
“Thank you again for doing this, Your Honor,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster.
Calhoun glanced over at me with a small downturn of his lips that didn’t help the fact he looked perpetually like some sort of bulldog.
“It’s early,” he said, and it felt like he’d chewed up the words only to spit them back out in my direction.
I gave a sheepish smile and shrugged my shoulders.
“I really do appreciate your willingness to talk to me about the injunction,” I continued on as if he hadn’t complained at all.
Calhoun barked out an incredulous laugh as he fished his keys from his pajama pants’ pocket and slotted it into the lock in one of the courthouse’s front doors.
“Willingness,” he repeated with a shake of his head and a huff as he pushed open the front door and shuffled inside ahead of me once he removed his key.
I quickly followed after him before the door could swing shut.
“Your damn paralegal wouldn’t let up about it,” he muttered and gave a shake of his bulldog head as the two of us made our way down the dim, stone-tiled hallways of the courthouse.
The only light came in from the thin, rectangular windows that spanned the top of the courthouse and cast perfectly-spaced beams of light onto the tiles.
I couldn’t help but huff out a soft laugh at his complaint, and I reached up to scratch at the back of my neck as I followed along behind him.
“Evelyn has that way about her,” I said in lieu of an apology. I’d have to give Evelyn some sort of damn fruit basket for all her efforts in this case.
Calhoun gave what I almost thought was a snort as he made his way toward the door of his chambers, but he refrained from any further comments about my paralegal.
Our footsteps echoed loudly in the resounding silence of the courthouse, and I felt like I should be keeping my voice as low as a whisper to make up for the noise.
“You could say that,” Calhoun said with a shake of his head before he pushed his key into the lock for his chambers.
He twisted the key before he shouldered open the doors and stepped inside.
I walked practically on his heels as the door started to swing shut, though Calhoun didn’t seem to notice. He mumbled something as he fumbled for a light switch, and then the overhead light flickered to life. Calhoun motioned me across the room, and we crossed the empty space toward his door without saying a word.
It was strange to see the chambers empty, because every other time I’d been inside, there’d always been at least one other person around. In fact, his assistant never seemed to leave the place, so it was odd not to see her at her desk.
Her name started with an ‘M’ if I remembered correctly, and she didn’t seem to like me much for reasons I’d never been able to discern. But she and Evelyn seemed to have some sort of rapport, and that was probably the only reason I had so much face time with the Judge.
Calhoun gestured for me to step ahead of him into his already open office door, and I offered him a smile of thanks as I made my way inside. I lowered myself down into one of the chairs that sat across from his large wooden desk while he dropped himself down into his large, leather chair with a grunt. I wanted to laugh at how strange it was to see a well-esteemed judge bleary-eyed and in his pajamas seated in his office, but I didn’t dare.
Calhoun, meanwhile, leaned back in his chair and didn’t say a word. Instead, he just gestured at me as if to tell me to go ahead.
I sucked in a breath before I leaned forward ever so slightly in my seat.
“Right,” I began. “How much were you briefed on the case by Evelyn, my paralegal?”
I had to assume that Evelyn had gotten out as much information as Calhoun would have let her over the phone, but I felt that it was better safe than sorry to actually ask.
Calhoun heaved a deep sigh and adjusted his posture in his seat.
“Natalie Morgan, civil asset forfeiture,” he said with another wave of his hand as if he was trying to speed things along.
I had the distinct thought that we could have had this entire conversation on the steps of the courthouse with how quickly he seemed to want to breeze through the exchange.
“Right,” I said again. “Natalie Morgan was subject to a police raid under the false claim that her residence was the primary residence of her ex-boyfriend, Race Chase.”
Natalie hadn’t given me her boyfriend’s full name, and I’d had to sift through plenty of records to find it. Luckily, not many people in Crowley, and probably the world, were named ‘Race’. His unfortunate last name just seemed like some sort of cosmic joke, or maybe his parents had hated him before he was even born.
Calhoun’s eyebrows rose at the name, and I nodded in silent agreement before I continued on.
“During the police raid, her personal property was taken, and when she tried to contest the warrant with the sheriff’s department, Sheriff Thompson threatened to arrest her f
or obstructing an investigation,” I finished my explanation with a deep sigh and a wave of my hands.
Calhoun gave a slow nod as he seemed to process what I’d said.
“And so, you’d like to have me issue an injunction so she can get her belongings back,” Calhoun didn’t so much as ask as tell me exactly what I wanted to hear.
“Right,” I said with a faint smile. “And--” but before I could continue on, Calhoun raised his hand up to silence me.
“Do you have proof that Ms. Morgan’s residence wasn’t also Mr. Chase’s residence?” he asked as he raised his bushy eyebrows.
I swallowed down the sentence I’d been trying to say before and cleared my throat.
“The only reason that the sheriff’s department raided my client’s home was because the ex-boyfriend had used her address for a bit of timeshare spam mail,” I explained, but I could feel that I was losing him.
Calhoun heaved another heavy sigh and glanced at the clock that sat high up on the wall behind me.
I shifted in my seat to follow his gaze.
“I need proof, Mr. Landon,” he said as if I didn’t know that. “I’ll be in my office until two o’clock today avoiding my wife and her damn sister. You have until then to bring me some form of proof that Mr. Race Chase had another primary residence before I can grant you and your client that injunction.”
I exhaled a sharp breath and nodded at his words. It wasn’t impossible, and according to the clock behind me on the wall, it was only 9:30 in the morning, which gave me four and a half hours to find the evidence of Natalie’s ex’s real primary residence.
While Calhoun might have seemed less than thrilled about whatever was happening with his wife and her sister, I couldn’t help but be immensely grateful for his troubles.
Did that make me a bad person?
I didn’t give myself time to dwell on that thought any longer before I pushed myself up to my feet with a soft grunt. I leaned forward toward Calhoun and extended one of my hands toward him for him to shake.
His bulldog face was drawn in a deep frown, but Calhoun leaned forward to shake my hand anyway. I had the distinct feeling that his face had more to do with his problems at home than it did me and my righteous crusade to get Natalie her mother’s ring back.
I didn’t wait for any sort of formal end to our conversation past the handshake before I slipped from Calhoun’s office and made my way back through the courthouse and onto the stone steps.
I took the steps two at a time and briskly walked over to Evelyn’s car where it waited for me in the parking lot. I didn’t immediately get into the car however, and instead I pulled my phone from my pocket. I swiped through the long lists of names and numbers in my contacts before I finally fell upon Natalie’s, and I hit the green ‘call’ emblem.
I raised my phone to my ear and listened as the line rang and rang. I began to think that she wasn’t going to answer when I heard that familiar click at the end of the line.
“Hello?” a feminine voice I recognized to be Natalie’s asked.
“Hi, Natalie, it’s Archer Landon from Landon Legal,” I greeted her as I leaned my back against Evelyn’s car.
The metal was already too warm for my comfort from the sun overhead, but I didn’t have the energy to stand back up again.
“Oh!” Natalie all but shouted as she seemed to perk up across the line. “Hi, Archer! I was wondering if you’d call. Not like that! I’m seeing someone. I mean, not that you aren’t a good-looking guy, but also I’m really not in the market to date, much less date a lawyer, which like, that sounds bad because you seem super nice but also-”
I couldn’t quite figure out where she was based on the noise in the background of the call, but wherever she was, it was certainly busy and loud. But right now, it didn’t matter. Not if I was going to meet the deadline, so I cut Natalie off before she could continue to ramble.
“I had some questions about your ex-boyfriend,” I practically shouted to make myself heard over her stream-of-consciousness style of monologuing as well as whatever the hell was happening in the background. “Like, where his primary residence actually was.”
I felt like I was racing to get my own sentences out before Natalie could start to ramble again.
It took a minute before she answered, and I caught what sounded like someone yelling in the room she was in over the phone. My brow furrowed as I tried to figure out where she actually was and why on earth it was so loud before ten in the morning on a Sunday.
“Okay,” Natalie popped back on the line and sounded a little breathless.
“So, I can’t actually talk right now because I’m like at work, and apparently I shouldn’t be answering my phone, even though I told Donna that I was on the phone with my lawyer,” she said, and her voice raised to a shout at the end of the sentence as I assumed she was aiming the words at whoever the hell Donna was.
“But I’m at Green Earth, that coffee place on--” she started and cut off again to yell something I couldn’t quite make out. “On Fifth and Madison. I’ll be here for a few hours so just--” the line went dead before she could offer me any other information.
I lowered my phone from my ear and stared at the darkened screen as if I could make whatever the hell had just happened make any more sense. I felt like I’d just sprinted for a mile straight, or like I’d taken one of those ill-advised shots you only ever took in college before your frontal lobe finished developing.
I reached up to rub at my temples as if I could lessen the pressure in my head after that damn phone call.
Natalie hadn’t quite given me the information I’d needed, but she had at least given me a place to meet her, which honestly was a little more than I’d expected from the flakey behavior I had begun to assume was built into her personality.
We all had our flaws, and Natalie’s was a lack of a filter, and mine was the target on my back.
I sighed and pushed myself off the increasingly hot side of the car before I pulled open the driver’s side door. But before I slipped into the car, however, I caught sight of a familiar-looking vehicle as it crept along the street in front of the courthouse without making any moves to turn into the parking lot.
I might have been paranoid, but I thought it was one of the unmarked squad cars I’d seen in the parking lot of the sheriff’s department. But, I brushed that suspicion from my mind as I ducked down to squeeze into the driver’s seat of Evelyn’s car and realigned my thoughts with the task at hand.
I thought I might have recognized the name of the coffee shop she’d mentioned, but to be on the safe side, I typed the name into the GPS on my phone and luckily for me, it was the first option that popped up. I made sure that the street names matched up with the ones Natalie had shouted over the phone before I slid my key into the ignition and started Evelyn’s car.
Once I had my phone set up in my lap so that I could still follow along with the GPS map if needed, I threw the car into drive, inched my way out of the courthouse’s parking lot, and nosed onto the street.
According to my phone, the cafe was about twenty minutes away, but I still had plenty of time that morning to gather the evidence I needed for Calhoun to grant my injunction, so I wasn’t too worried about the drive.
I set off toward Green Earth as my head buzzed with a plethora of thoughts I couldn't quite organize despite how much I tried. I had spent most of the morning pushing away my fears about another attempted murder, but that was the sort of thing that was hard to ignore. It was just too damn personal.
I knew that it didn’t matter if I remembered the name of the deputy I had seen because I would never forget what I’d seen. But I still couldn’t stop my mind from attempting to conjure up a nametag to pin to the hauntingly familiar face.
I drummed my fingers against Evelyn’s steering wheel as I made my way toward Natalie’s coffee shop and resigned myself to dwelling on the answerless sort of questions that rattled around the inside of my head.
Was Thompson doing m
ore than I knew? Was that why there had been a clear attempt on my life? Was all of this just a wild goose chase to nothing? What would happen if David actually won the election?
Well, some of the questions were answerable, but none of them were any less infuriating to dwell upon.
I tried to drown out my thoughts by cranking up the dial on the car radio. I didn’t dare change the station from Evelyn’s evident preset, because while I might have still had a faint ringing in my ears from the gunshot the night before, it hadn’t made me stupid.
At least the traffic was light for a Sunday morning, and I was grateful that I wasn’t stuck behind lines of church goers heading to and from their parish of choice.
It meant I arrived at Green Earth in the exact twenty minutes that the GPS had predicted, and I could ignore the questions in my brain as well as finally turn off the music that had started to bug me just a bit.
The coffee shop was nestled into a line of stylish, modern-looking shops that lined a stretch of sidewalk along a busy street nearer to Fort Worth than Crowley. The large glass window at the front of the shop was etched with what I assumed was supposed to be planet Earth but looked more like an uneven blob.
The sidewalk directly in front of the shop was partitioned off with a low, wrought-iron fence to box in a small patio area full of outdoor seating. None of the furniture looked like it had been bought at the same store, or in the same decade.
I felt like the mismatched clutter was an attempt at bohemian sensibilities and the vague idea of sustainability that had recently become en vogue. While it wasn’t to my specific tastes, it apparently appealed to plenty of people because the entire patio was packed full of customers.
I was forced to loop around the street twice until I was able to find an open parking spot. I sucked in my breath through my teeth as I managed to successfully parallel park and wedge Evelyn’s car in between two near-identical Priuses.
